Other Earths (41 page)

 

Liz Williams
’ mother is a Gothic novelist, and her father was a part-time conjuror, so she didn’t have a hope. She’s been a science fiction fan since the age of ten, and she started writing seriously about ten years ago. Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure series was responsible, and she’s still a huge fan of Vance. Other favorites include Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Mary Gentle, George R.R. Martin, C.J. Cherryh, Tanith Lee, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. She now writes full time, but she has had various incarnations. Her background is in history and philosophy of science; having done degrees in philosophy and artificial intelligence at the Universities of Manchester and Sussex, she did a doctorate at Cambridge, graduating in 1993. She held a variety of part-time jobs, including a now-infamous stint on Brighton’s pier as a tarot reader, before full-time work in Kazakhstan. She also spent a year running an IT program at Brighton Women’s Centre, then became a full time writer in 2002.

 

Theodora Goss
was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. She lives in Boston, where she is completing a Ph.D. in English literature. Her short story collection,
In the Forest of Forgetting
, which includes World Fantasy Award nominee “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm” and Nebula Award nominee “Pip and the Fairies,” was published in 2006.
Interfictions
, an anthology she coedited with Delia Sherman, was published in 2007. Her short stories and poems have been reprinted in a number of Year’s Best anthologies, including
Year’s Best Fantasy
,
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror
, and
The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens
. Visit her website at
www.theodoragoss.com
.

 

Greg van Eekhout
’s stories have appeared in places such as
Year’s Best Science Fiction
,
Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror
,
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, and
Realms of Fantasy
. His debut novel,
Norse Code
, will be released in May 2009. Greg lives in San Diego and blogs at
http://www.writingandsnacks.com
.

 

Alastair Reynolds
was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. After getting a Ph.D. in astronomy he moved to the Netherlands to work for the European Space Agency. He turned full-time writer in 2004. He and his wife have returned to South Wales, near Cardiff. His first fiction sale appeared in
Interzone
in 1990, and he published his first novel,
Revelation Space
, in 2000.
Revelation Space
was shortlisted for the BSFA and Clarke awards, and his second novel,
Chasm City
, went on to win the BSFA. Subsequent works include another six novels, of which the most recent are
Pushing Ice
(2005),
The Prefect
(2007), and the far-future space opera
House of Suns
(2008), as well as the linked novellas “Diamond Dogs,” “Turquoise Days” (2003), and two collections of short fiction,
Galactic North
and
Zima Blue
(2006). Forthcoming are stories in
Galactic Empires
and
The Starry Rift
. His story in
Other Earths
stems from a long fascination and love affair with the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries.

 

Paul Park
lives in Massachusetts with his family and occasionally teaches at Williams College. Since finishing four novels set in an alternate version of eastern Europe (the Roumania Quartet—
A Princess of Roumania
,
The Tourmaline
,
The White Tyger
,
The Hidden World
), he has been writing short fiction. “A Family History” came out of a fundraiser for the Clarion West workshops, during which he auctioned off on eBay certain elements of an as yet unwritten story—the theme, the title, the various locations, the characters, the genre, etc. The winners would provide these things, and he would write a story that incorporated them. “A Family History” is the result.

 

Lucius Shepard
was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, and lives in Vancouver, Washington. His short fiction has won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, The International Horror Writers Award, the National Magazine Award, the Locus Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the World Fantasy Award. His latest works are a short novel,
Softspoken
, a career retrospective,
The Best of Lucius Shepard
, and
Viator Plus
, a collection of newer work from PS Publishing in Britain.

 

Benjamin Rosenbaum
grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He wanted to be either a superhero, a scientist, or a writer. He didn’t want to be the kind of scientist who carefully studies and contemplates natural phenomena, however; he wanted to be the kind who builds giant ray guns. As for being a superhero, while he does have superpowers, he reports that they are not very impressive, and he could never design a costume to his liking. He therefore decided to be a writer. He says, “Typically, when you ask writers why they write, they look at you dourly and say, ‘I have to. I am driven to do so. If you do not absolutely have to write, spare yourself this misery.’ Not me. I don’t have to write. I write because I love it. I’m grateful for every minute I get to do it. It’s like being a superhero, but you don’t need a costume.”